Monday, January 9, 2012

EVE Burn-out

There it is, written in glowing bold letters. Not quite a week has passed since my incendiary post on incursions and ISK making so I've had a bit of time to cool down and cogitate about my position in EVE Online. I've logged in to make sure the skill queue was filled for a while (large pulse and beam spec, followed by Minnie BS V) but not more than that. But the reality of it is still there: as far as EVE is concerned I've hit rock bottom for now. Yes, to the point of not even wanting to join a new group of pilots and kill stuff in space.

In retrospect, my situation was totally predictable. While I do not try to play every single video game I come across, I am very specific about those I do play and when one game sings a particularly tasteful song I dive into it heart and soul, get acquainted with the people who make it, play it and mod it. And this usually lasts three to four years. Around that time I will have poured so much of myself into the game that it becomes a routine akin to waking up in the morning and going to work. And finally interest fades. It happened in Quake. It happened in Diablo II. It happened in flight sims and race sims. And it's happening right now.

Actually it started happening at the end of last spring just before the Incarna debacle but that wasn't even the cause of it. I took the summer off and I admitted to missing some of the funnest parts of EVE but those fun parts were becoming fewer and farther between. I can't exactly put the finger on what caused the burn-out. Not flying with the right people? Being too hard- and hot-headed? Not being HTFU'd enough? Whatever it was the little [E] icon at the bottom of my screen became less and less tempting. And coming back three months after the Jita and Amarr monuments were figuratively reduced to rubble I logged back to what had become a US TZ wasteland. The numbers have been slightly better since Crucible came out but to me the damage was done, and I'll simply never see EVE the same again. The short break wasn't enough to make me see EVE under a new light, and since I came back in early September the old "blah" was still there. But unlike the games I mentioned before which can be installed and uninstalled at will, EVE requires a subscription, and as it stands right now I simply cannot afford to pay for a service I'm not interested in anymore.

In December I resubbed pretty much out of habit so the account still has until mid March before it runs out, so during this time Cozmik will still be training, and I do still have some friends in there both real-life and virtual; these will be properly thanked and saluted. And though my character doesn't have the wealth of many other 58 million skill point characters, I will most probably be handing out a Rifter here and a Thrasher there. Yes I will make myself a "Can I haz your stuff" list and some people will be very surprised to find themselves on it! But no I will not be throwing away everything because who knows, there may come a time when flying Internet Spaceships may appeal to me again. But this time I'm not holding my breath. As I've mentioned many times before I came to EVE to play a space sim, not a business sim, so now I'm out indifinitely. Naoru Kozan wished for me to find a new game to scratch my spaceship itch, but now I'm so far gone that I feel the need to get as far away from space games as possible.

So starting this week this blog will go back to the purpose I gave it last spring when I renamed it, which was to talk about life "beyond the confines of space". What started as my EVE blog will now return to being my blog about pretty much everything I care about. I never started this only for EVE or for e-Fame; some readers may hate the lack of EVE content or actually miss it (this would have me rupture my spleen in laughter!), but writing a blog is a very selfish affair. And in any case it's an awesome pressure valve! So while Cozmik R5 will not be plying the space lanes of New Eden anymore, I, Benoit Gauthier, will still be alive and playing games and music, travelling by mountain bike, and in general having the best time possible.

Thank you very much EVE Online for this sometimes awesome, sometimes dreadful ride. And I want to thank each and every one of you who in the four years of existence of this blog have taken even the smallest amount of time to read whatever I was writing about. Now if you'll excuse me, this dragon needs fragging... >:)

o7

To Rixx Javix, holder of the mantle of BlogFather: I hereby leave into your hands the decision to remove this blog from the Blog Pack, as the EVE content will slowly dwindle down to near nothingness. It's just something I have to do.

First of all you'll be missed and I'm sorry to see you go. More importantly however, you have to do what you feel is right and honestly EVE shouldn't be part of that decision. Playing Eve isn't eternal, nothing is, we all change and grow and move on eventually. Some longer, some sooner, but eventually we all will. To think differently is to fool yourself.